All the fun we had in Thailand!

This post is a little after the fact, but I felt I should post it. It's a little long and I'm going to come back to add photos to the sections:

Ah, all the extracurricular activities!

We visited several neat places!

We went elephant riding! We also visited and elephant zoo where we saw the elephants put on a show, afterwards the elephants would give hugs and we fed them. Walking out we got to have some fun with a baby elephant and Ashley found out how strong they are. It grabbed her hand in its trunk and tried running off towards its mom.

We visited the Grand Palace and found out about the history of the Monarchy and various historical events. Then later that day we went to the Vimanmek Palace (Teakwood Mansion). This one was very nice, it had Victorian style architecture with grounds and a lake. It was naturally presented in a linear museum that you walked through, but it was nice seeing.

One night we took the BTS Skytrain to Sathorn Pier (Yes it was the site where a grenade went off) and caught a riverboat up the Chao Phraya River to the Azeatique pier area. We had a nice dinner with Miew! She is a Thai pharmacist that is learning at the University of Arizona. She later joined us for some of our professional work days too.

As a group we visited some really good Wats as well, my favorite was Wat Arun, the downside is that it was under reconstruction so we couldn’t explore all of it. There was another Wat that was really good that had motifs of demon/monkey statues holding up the pillars. This place also had a really cool scale model of Wat Arun carved in stone.

Our trip to Ayuthaya went pretty well. Later that night, we all got dressed for a night on the town. We first visited the rooftop bar known as the Moon Bar, it was packed and nowhere for us to sit. So we went to the Sirrocco Skybar at the Lebua instead! This bar is known from Hangover 2, the view was amazing from both sites of the Bangkok Skyline.

The night before we went to Pattaya, we checked out The Onyx. It was a bar/dance club. I went inside and danced. It was pretty cool as we met a girl there who knew the DJ and got us some free drinks. We got home pretty late and slept a couple hours before our trip to Pattaya.

Pattaya was pretty fun. We checked out the beach first. It was pretty awesome as we rented some chairs under a cabana to lounge under. The ocean was pretty good too, the water was shallow for quite a distance and we made it pretty far from the beach before actually having to swim. When we were done we grabbed some food at the nearby mall. I tried the McDonald’s menu finally and got the Red Hot Spicy Chicken with Rice and Egg. It was delicious! After the day’s events, we went to the Alcaraz Cabaret Show. It’s a show where all the performers are men or ladyboys and they lip sync songs from many different countries like France, Russia, Thailand, China, etc. and they dance or perform to them. My favorite parts was one performance where a man is singing, it went dark then a woman sings and it alternates. Then there was a scene where there are golden and silver statues on stage. I highly recommend this show and I won’t spoil how it ends.

On the group’s last day in Thailand it was a free day so the group had lunch together at a Japanese restaurant. Then about half the group went to the Bangkok Convention Center to check out the Thailand Research Expo. We were given VIP status and shown around the various booths. A lot of it was based on agriculture. We were shown some of the pharmaceutical and healthcare research. Most of the research shown here were already done in other countries, but this research focused on developing it within Thailand to lower healthcare costs while maintaining effectiveness. The reason they do this is due to the National Healthcare provided by the government, they need to keep costs down to maintain the program.

We went to The White Flower Restaurant at Siam Square One for a farewell dinner to Thailand. The food was very delicious. It was during this dinner that we learned about the bombing at Ratchaprasong Junction just 0.4 miles away from us. We stayed where we were and just enjoyed the dinner while Dr. Katz checked in with the University of Arizona. It was very sobering to think that I had spent my free day walking through that intersection multiple times and had even passed through it not that much time before the bomb went off.

After dinner everyone just went to their hotel rooms until the flight. I got up with the group to say goodbye to them (my flight wasn’t until the next day), and went back to bed.

For our last day in Thailand, Supranee and I went out to the countryside to visit some food markets. Lots of delicious food to be had! We even visited the Train market where all the stalls are right on the tracks and they’ll quickly pull it all in as the train rolls through, although it didn’t happen while we were there.

Despite the events that went on in Thailand, I highly recommend coming back or visiting the first time. There is plenty of stuff to see and many things to do.